JOB CONTINUES his lament this week, openly wishing that he could hide in Sheol until God’s anger was past. In response, Eliphaz the Temanite accuses Job of guilt, asserting that God only punishes the wicked.
We know that’s true, but judgment doesn’t always happen when we want it—right now, in the physical realm, where we can see it. Furthermore, we can see with our own eyes, as Job did, that bad things happen to good people.
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WE SEE the divine council worldview in the ongoing discourse of Eliphaz the Temanite, as he mentions the “Holy Ones,” an epithet used elsewhere in the Old Testament for the Watchers (Daniel 4:13, 17).
We also discuss the hidden meaning of the “sparks” in Job 5:7, the bene resheph or “sons of Resheph,” and the significance of the Canaanite plague-god Resheph (hint: Resheph was called Apollo by the Greeks and Romans).
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THE FRIENDS of Job are to be commended for giving up so much of their time to commiserate with him in his suffering. However, their understanding of the cause of his suffering was incomplete.
At least they were more encouraging than Job’s wife, who advised him to “curse God and die.” We discuss the divine council reference in Job 2, the nature of Satan (or “the satan”), the location of the home of Eliphaz the Temanite, another clue that Job lived somewhere in what later became Edom (possibly near Petra), Job’s wish that he’d never been born, a veiled reference to the spirits of the Rephaim in Job 3:14-15, and Eliphaz’s description of what sounds like sleep paralysis or night terrors when he was visited by Pachad, a demonic spirit called “Terror.”
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